Chris Bell

I just picked up my new Fulton-Webb D’lux 18 amp yesterday.  Wow!  Sounds fantastic.  Here is the website. Check it out. http://www.fultonwebbamps.com/deluxe18.php .  Steve and Bill have really done a fantastic job.  As my friend Jonas pointed out, these amps allow you to hear the sound of your guitar… not the sound of the amp, and it’s incredibly responsive to how hard or soft you might be playing at the moment.  I took it to a fancy restaurant for a mellow jazz gig last night and the tone at low volume was round and clean, but yesterday in the studio I had it singing with the 335 and it sounded like Cream “Wheels of Fire.”  Nice work gentlemen.

I just finished teaching at The Austin Jazz Project, a one week jazz camp for high school musicians from the Austin area.  We had a great group of kids and they really worked hard all week.  It’s no wonder they completely knocked it out of the park at the concert on Friday night!  Our song list included Take the A Train, I Can’t Get Started, Norwegian Wood, Red Clay,  Old Lady Walk a Mile and a Half (a traditional calypso), and Clifford Brown’s Blues Walk.  The camp focuses heavily on improvisation and the concert included a lot of great soloists thanks to a great staff: Dr. Shane Pitsch (brass), Ponder East (woodwinds, piano), Aaron Lack (all things percussive) and I covered guitar and bass.  I’m already looking forward to next year.

It seems like I’ve given this lesson several times in the last couple of weeks, so I’ve decided to write about it here in hopes that it may help some of my colleagues who are not able to come by in person.  Inevitably, a student shows up here and we find that one of their biggest hang-ups when improvising over changes is the ability to take a melodic idea to a logical conclusion.  What I mean is: the student may have a strong grasp on their scales in various positions but once they begin a melodic idea, they have a difficult time hearing how to take that idea to a logical conclusion.  I’m overly sensitive to this issue and point it out right away in my students because I had the same problem back when I was a student at the Berklee College of Music.  My teacher use to tell me, “You got the plane flying all around but you can’t land it!”  To correct my problem we spent a few weeks working on a very simple exercise to help me hear (this is the most important word in this sentence) how certain notes resolve within a chord.  Here’s how it works:

Begin by taking a simple major triad and play it to get the sound in your ears.  Then play the notes of the triad while you SING ALONG.  This is really important.  Singing along with what you are playing helps you develop a relationship between your hands and your ears.  Recognizing shapes on the guitar visually is not going to help.  Remember our goal is to hear how our  lines develop and conclude in real time (while we’re improvising). As you get comfortable singing the notes of the triad, begin to add diatonic approach notes to each chord tone to create motion back to one of the notes of the triad.  What you’ll begin to hear is a hierarchy among the notes of the diatonic scale.  Chord tones feel “at rest” while the other notes of the scale have a tendency to resolve to the nearest chord tone. After doing this for some time, expand the exercise to include chromatic approach tones to hear how these notes resolve as well.   Once you get comfortable working with the triad, extend it to include the 7th, 9th 11th and 13th.  I’m going to include a short video demonstrating how to get started so stand by. Good luck… oh and remember, if you have any questions please feel free to email me at belltowerbooking@gmail.com.

Chris

Ok bloggybolgerton here… I’m going to try and post news about my guitar universe which includes news about my group The Belltower Trio.

2009 has brought about some major changes in the way I approach my music… I’ve been singing which has turned out to be really fun and I think the shows have benefited in terms of the overall presentation… I enjoy playing in a jazz format but have longed to get away from the “parade of solos” that defines so many jazz performances these days… The group consists of me on guitar and vocals and Ponder East on Sax… from here we’ve been using Aaron Allen on bass most of the time (he’s a great player and so there have been times where he wasn’t available) and we’ve filled his spot with Johnny Vogelsang and Daniel Durham when Aaron couldn’t make it. IF you are in the area, we are playing at the Central Market (Westgate) the day after Christmas and it should be a fun show. I’m adding new tunes all the time and I’ve tried to pull from as many sources as possible.. Fats Waller, T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, and so on… We go on at 6:30p and play until 9p. Hope to see you guys there.